holiday

Day Two of Cebu – Bagels & Massages

SarahLeave a comment

Saturday 6th May 2023

This morning we had quite the sleep in. I think I woke around 8am to go to the bathroom then went back to sleep and woke just after 10am.

By the time we got ready for the day, the cafe downstairs had stopped serving breakfast so we Google mapped where we knew there was a beauty spa we could get Nails/Hair/Skin done and figured we would just find something to eat around there.

Bree ordered the GRAB (as per usual as for some reason my credit card isn’t working on the app) and our driver came and picked us up in his boy racer car 😂 when I opened the door there was this massive cockroach 🪳 on the inside door so the driver had to come round and get rid of it for me

When we arrived at this little shopping area called ‘The Greenery’ we quickly noticed there weren’t really any place of interest for us to eat at. It’s definitely a Philippine thing because they loveeeee their chicken! Literally every place is a chicken store and so many food outlets sell chicken 😂 I think our options were chicken or seafood and we weren’t keen on either so we walked 10 minutes down the road to a cafe called Abaca Bakery Cafe. I mentioned in my last post about how so many restaurants, cafes and stores here seem super over staffed and lots of people just stand around… well that was definitely the case with Abaca Bakery. We walked in and there was one person sitting and having a coffee and cake. We walked to the counter and they had two staff at the till (one a trainee and one training) then two other guys behind the cabinet. Then they had another 4-5 staff off to the side of the counter just standing there watching. It’s honestly so awkward (this has happened to us a few times) where we walk in a place and it’s dead silent and they all just look at us and wait intensely to what we’re after. I ordered a Calamansi Juice as I kept seeing it advertised everywhere and wanted to try it. Along with a toasted bagel and lamington. Bree ordered a toasted bagel as well but she skipped the drink as she grabbed one from somewhere else prior. After confirming our order about 3 times they got our name and we went and sat down at a table.

Now this is the weirdest thing. When the juice & Lamington were ready, they put it on the counter and called out my name to go up and get it. Call me crazy but there’s literally all these staff standing there doing absolutely nothing that they could have just brought it to our table 😂 but instead, we got up and walked to the counter as they all watched us in silence to pick up our food and sit back down. When our bagels were ready they did the same thing, called our name out and watched us get up and get them just to sit back down again. I can totally understand when it’s a busy cafe you wait for your name to be called and you grab your drink or whatever but they literally had one customer and all these people had nothing to do. When we started eating our food, one staff member came over to me and said “I’m so sorry ma’am but we do not allow outside drinks in the cafe” and handed me a paper bag for Bree to put her drink in 😂 totally fine, but 1. I’m obviously not the one with the drink so I don’t know why she didn’t direct this to Bree and 2. Did it matter that much? As like, no one else was there. Haha, it is what it is but just little things like that make me think, would you not have just let that slide? 😂 I dunno… I’m just adjusting to the culture I suppose.

The bagels were actually really good! I’ve come to the conclusion that Filipinos make really yummy bread.

We walked back to The Greenery and went to this skin clinic called DMV Dermatology so Bree could enquire about Skin frequency type treatments – however they said she’d have to make an appointment with the clinic doctor before she could get any treatments done? We had no time for that and also didn’t see the point of it so we declined and went to another beauty place called Revive. (Note: we had Instagram searched all these places prior to arriving and they looked so nice but when you turn up it’s such a different story and every place you go to looks really dodgy 😂) Bree booked in to have a pedicure done and I asked for a manicure with backfill. (This took a lot of explaining as they thought I wanted extensions on all of my nails) I had two ladies working on my nails and one lady massaging my feet.

As they do it over here, they filed my old gel colour off then scraped it off with the cuticle remover 🙃 then they used this tube of gel looking substance to put on all my nails to ‘backfill’ them. Everything is an experience honestly 😅 the end result was fine, however they did look a little round and clunky but I suppose they were better than before.

The whole process took nearly 2 hours. Bree and I started at the same time and her pedicure took just as long as my nails. One thing to note over here, everything is definitely on ‘Island Time’ and there is no rush to go anywhere or get anything done quickly. Something which we’re learning to adjust to 😅

While we were getting our nails done, this cute little 4 year old girl came in with her Mum and Nanny to get her nails and hair done. Just had visions of my future child haha! While her nails were getting painted her Nanny was hand feeding her chicken 😂 (of course)

It was after 4pm by the time we finished so the day had pretty much come to an end for us. We headed back to our hotel and I dropped some washing off at the laundromat across the road to get done before we headed off to El Nido the next day.

While the was getting done, good ole’ Bree spent an hour at the hotel gym while I went in the pool and lounged in a pool chair 😂

It was 6pm before we knew it and we were starting to think about dinner. As the mall was really the only place of familiarity at this point, we ordered a car to take us to Ayala Centre and had dinner at this Italian Restaurant, finished off with ice creams at Dairy Queen 😋

We hadn’t washed our hair since we left Australia and wanted to treat ourselves to Blow-waves so we booked at a hair salon at the mall (that had good reviews) called David’s Salon. We were tossing up whether to get Kerastase Hair Treatments but as we were heading to El Nido the next day and would be doing a boat tour with swimming we decided to save that for another day.

I confirmed with the receptionist we could both get our hair done the next morning at 10am and she booked us in.

It wouldn’t be an Asia holiday without a massage every day so we ordered a car to take us to a different massage place called Aloha Massage & Cafe (again, good reviews on Google)

It was located in the weirdest place though – right next door to a pub playing super loud music and live bands with lots of people all outside at tables drinking and smoking. You literally had to weave your way through the tables to get to the massage parlour. Once you were inside the massage parlour you could still hear the band playing and everyone laughing and talking outside so I wasn’t sure how relaxing this massage was going to be…

When we arrived, the receptionist asked if we’d made an appointment so I immediately thought “wow this place must be good if you have to book”

Bree booked a volcanic hot stone massage for 90 minutes and I did the Swedish 90 minute massage. (AUS$18)

The experience started off great, we were escorted to a little area where they washed and scrubbed our feet and put flip flops on for us. Then they took us to a curtained room where we could lay down on these massage beds and put on these disposable shorts 😂. It was however so dark that I probably put mine on back to front. You wouldn’t want to be elderly as you could barely see a thing.

Massage started off fine however THE PRESSURE was a massive let down. Prior to the massage they had us fill out these forms saying how you wanted your pressure and where you wanted them to focus. I circled neck & head and wanted STRONG pressure. The pressure was so weak. Plus she kept going over the same area with the same movement over and over and over again. I was so close to asking her to change it up as the movements were starting to irritate me 😅 and she wasn’t really massaging deep anywhere, just lots of soft strokes up and down and not getting in anywhere. I’ve gathered because I’m pregnant everyone treats me like a glass vase Incase they break me which is super frustrating. Not to mention she spent barely any time on my head and neck I wondered why I even bothered filling out the form 🤦‍♀️ Half way through the massage though, the LOUDEST snoring was coming from Bree’s side of the room and I had to keep stifling my laughter that she’d fallen asleep this fast and that she actually even snored that loud. I kept thinking ‘wow she must have been SO tired’ however towards the end of the massage when I peeked over at her I realised it wasn’t even her but the person in the curtained room next door to her. Not the most relaxing experience with spa music playing + the live band + some guy snoring his head off all at once but we survived 😅

It must just be my massage’s over here being not up to par as Bree said her massage was great! Plus there were some people before us that re-booked for the next day so if you’re ever in Cebu and want a massage I wouldn’t completely write off Aloha Massage & Cafe.

When we got back to the hotel it was after midnight so it was straight into bed after having showers. Thank god we were leaving Cebu the next day as we were running out of things to entertain us. Hopefully my next post will be a bit more interesting as we head off to El Nido! ☺️

First time in The Philippines 🇵🇭 Flying Scoot & Arrival into Cebu

SarahLeave a comment

So much has happened since I last wrote a post, however I have no time for a life update as I’m currently on Day 1 on my trip in The Philippines!

I’ve never been to The Philippines and to be honest, I hadn’t thought much about going. I’ve never done much research on this beautiful place in Southeast Asia, however my friend Bree is getting married in July and she mentioned she was thinking about doing a trip to Asia as a pre-wedding celebration so I jumped on board! She’s a bit like me where she could hop on a plane and travel solo anywhere so when she said she thought she’d tick off a country she hadn’t been to, it would have been rude of me to let her go all alone…. (Well, that’s what I told the husband anyways 🤫)

So Thursday evening, Bree’s fiancé Jack dropped us off at the airport where we had a smooth check-in with Scoot Airlines then made our way to the Airport Aspire lounge for drinks, dinner & some yummy little carrot cakes for dessert 🍰

Thank god we had the lounge because our flight was meant to depart at 9:45pm but was delayed until 11pm so it was nice to have somewhere to relax to pass the time. By the time we boarded the flight and everyone had taken their seats we took off for Singapore around 11:30pm

When we looked at going to The Philippines originally, the flights were around AUS$480 each. By the time we decided on dates, I got time off work and we booked online the flights came to around AUS$800 per person. When you add your seat selection and baggage etc… it’s not as ‘cheap’ as advertised but still not a bad price. We considered going with Singapore Airlines instead of their budget airline sister Scoot, however the flight departure and arrival times weren’t ideal so we stuck with Scoot.

The flight was scheduled to take 5 hours, 50 minutes however it only took 4 hours 30 minutes which was a relief because it was definitely in the top 5 worst flights I’ve had. Not because the weather was bad or anything but because it was a red eye flight and I barely slept. Firstly both Bree and my seats wouldn’t recline at all, then it was too hot in the cabin so I started fanning my face with the emergency instruction card when we had taken off. THEN I started thinking about how hot it was and started to feel claustrophobic and got anxious feeling that I would pass out. This has happened to me in the past (like mini panic attacks) and usually I put my head between my legs and I kind of come right but because the seats were tight and my belly is 6 months pregnant 🤰 than it was all just impossible! I even got up to ask a flight attendant if there was an empty row I could just lay down as I felt like fainting and she just said “no sorry” then went back to preparing the meals people had ordered. I wasn’t expecting her to find a row out of nowhere but at least act concerned 🙄

Anyways, it was not an enjoyable flight so I was relieved when we finally arrived in Singapore. As we only had an hour before our connecting flight, we found our gate and I found a little spot on the floor to have a 30 minute nap before we boarded.

Luckily our flight was on time and we got into Cebu exactly at 10:04am, 1 minute earlier than originally scheduled. This flight i actually had a seat that reclined and I got a tiny amount of sleep to make me feel normal again so it was automatically better than the first!

Once we’d collected our suitcase, we headed outside and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. The taxi was about 650 pesos which works out to be around $17-18AUD for the 30-40 minute drive. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the currency here as I’m so used to going to Bali and automatically knowing how much things are in AUD.

One of the first things I noticed here was everyone drives on the right hand side like they do in America. And the cars are all left-wheel drive. The roads are similar to Bali in terms of its infrastructure however I didn’t feel Cebu was as full on as Bali was with the traffic. Plus they have traffic lights that people actually wait at haha!

We had booked 2 nights at Citadines Cebu which was a serviced apartment type accommodation in the city. Check-in was easy and the room was nice. They even decorated the room with some balloons and cupcakes to celebrate Bree getting married which was nice of them. Unfortunately though the ants got into the cupcakes a little but we were so hungry we blew them off and ate them anyways 😂

Once we had both showered and made ourselves look a bit normal after not sleeping for 24 hours, we went downstairs to the corner store and bought a couple of SIM cards for our phones. There was also this cute lemonade stand/store outside our hotel and I got us a couple of lemonades for like AUS$2 each which were yum!

The SIM cards were a bit of a nightmare to figure out how to work but we tried setting them up anyways and Bree ordered a GRAB car for us (like Uber) to somewhere nearby where we could get our nails done. The first place we went to looked super quiet and we weren’t 100% sure on the treatments so we went to another place a couple of doors down that looked a little better and asked if we could get two pedicures.

This was not the finished result, this was when I started haha

It wasn’t until we sat down that they said only one lady could do us so we would have to go one at a time. (Which was weird as I’m not sure what the other 5 ladies who worked there were doing) I went first and it was a terrible Pedicure! 😂 she took my old gel colour off with a nail file and when she was doing my cuticles she made me bleed. Bree and I were messaging each other while we sat there and quickly agreed that she wouldn’t be getting one. The pedicure was only about AUD$24 altogether but I wouldn’t be going back.

My toes didn’t end up looking too bad in the end – even if it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. After the pedicure we took another GRAB to the biggest mall in Cebu, Ayala Center. It was definitely big! I think there were about 4 levels and every time we explored one level there were just more and more corners or shops we hadn’t explored yet. I bought myself a dress, crop jacket and crop shirt (for after pregnancy haha) and Bree bought some pants & a top.

We had barely eaten apart from some lollies when we were boarding the plane to Cebu and the ant cupcakes so we had a semi-early dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant at the mall. For 2x plates of spring rolls, veges, rice, satay chicken and 2x drinks it came to around AUD$50 which wasn’t bad. What was funny were the staff kept yelling out something to the other staff members and they all responded at once with “YES!”. We’re not sure if they were saying something like “Asked customer if they would like desert?” “YES!” And they did it every time they did something customer service-wise but it was so random that we kept laughing through our dinner. Not to mention we were asked about 3 times if we wanted more cutlery. Even a spoon was offered a couple of times when we weren’t eating anything that really required a spoon. As soon as we started the dinner too, they came over and asked us if we wanted to look at the menu for dessert. I felt like saying “can I finish my first meal first and then decide?” Haha. Filipino people are very helpful and kind but also lack a little common sense/need to read the room a little better 😂 (I have more stories regarding this to come)

Once we’d finished dinner we went and had the most delicious gelato’s afterwards – I think we tried about 5 flavours each before settling on 2. I ordered a white chocolate and caramel flavour along with a chocolate Malteser flavour.

We had said we were going to try and get as many massages as we could so we went to a massage place in the mall and paid about AUD$10 each for hour long massages 😅 as I’m pregnant I couldn’t sit in one of those massage chair so they just had me sitting on this stool which if I’m honest probably made my back ache more. The massage wasn’t terrible, she could have gone a little harder but I also don’t want to complain for $10 haha. I nearly fell asleep as I was so tired so it must have relaxed me anyways.

After the massages, we thought we would check out the Metro Supermarket in the mall and it did not disappoint. They had soooo many types of groceries from around the world. Bree was especially impressed as there were heaps of things from Canada that she can’t get in Australia. As we have a night in Cebu before we head home, we said we’d definitely come back for a grocery shop before heading back to Australia 🇦🇺 hopefully we don’t over-do our luggage limit with Scoot Airlines!

A quick GRAB ride back to the hotel and we were asleep by 11pm. To be honest, we were wanting an early night but we spent way too much time at the mall! We decided we wouldn’t set our alarms and wake up at whatever time the next day so we could catch up on some sleep.

Next post: Beauty treatments & yummy bagels 🥯

Nusa Penida – 24th August 2022

SarahLeave a comment

This morning we were up super early to get ready for our day trip to Nusa Penida!
Nathan had to quickly go and get our clothes from the laundry place as we had run out of clean clothes the day before but they had shut before we could collect them again.
Our driver who picked us up was a guy called Agung who arrived around 7:00am (a little later than scheduled as he was confused as to where our hotel was)
Luckily he was a quick driver and we got to the harbor in Sanur a little after 8:00am.

Sanur is a little seaside town on the southeast of Bali. This is where all the boats will depart from if you’re doing any trips out to the islands.
When we got to the harbor, Agung took us to the one of the boat companies to collect our pre-booked tickets and then showed us what boat to take. There were so many people at the harbor! There’s so many different companies that do day-trips so there’s definitely a lot of commotion as people are trying to find their boats or lining up for tickets.

Once our boat was ready for everyone to board, we waddled through the water (just below knee height) and were helped onto the boat by the people working on board.
I have to say though, there was a lot of pushing and cutting in line!! Like we’re all literally going to the same place I wish people would just chill a bit. Not to mention Sanur Harbor hasn’t been developed properly where you can just step onto the boat. You literally have to walk in the water to get on and off so when people are pushing in front just to get on it’s super annoying.

The boat ride to Nusa Penida took about an hour. I read online it’s only meant to take about 42 minutes so maybe it just felt a lot longer as I had assumed it’d be a quick 20 minute ride.
If you get seasick, definitely take some tablets beforehand as there were a few people (mainly children) who were not well on the way over.

Once we got to Nusa Penida, we met our driver who was waiting for us with our name on a sign. We told him in the car where we wanted to go and he recommended we start at Broken Beach as there would be less tourists there at that time of day.

Broken Beach is a scenic coastal formation on the southwestern edge of Nusa Penida. It’s one of the more popular hangout spots for the manta rays however we didn’t see any from where we were.

Next stop was Angels Billabong which is just down from Broken Beach. If you like you can swim in the natural infinity pool which is framed by rock cliffs and hangs out over the ocean overlooking Manta Point Beach.

When we got back to the car, I had a look at the photos our guide had taken and they definitely weren’t as good as what our guide took of us in Ubud! Hahahaha. To get the scenery in the background, he kept adjusting the settings so it had this weird kind of warped or stretched out affect. In other words, I looked massive in all the pictures! I tried to edit them the best I could but if you see my legs look really weird or my ass the size of a watermelon in any of these pictures than now you know why 😀 😀 😀

When we hopped back in the car, our driver took us to Kelingking Beach which is one of the most popular and iconic views in Bali and has the famous ‘T-Rex’ shaped rock sticking out over the ocean. The view was absolutely beautiful! The water was clear and blue and the beach looked absolutely amazing. There’s a 120m high path to go down to the beach but the hike takes about 2 hours to get down and back up and it didn’t look easy! Everyone was sweating when they were returning so we decided to give it a miss. Especially as we had more to see.

I did read online that there’s another spot located very close to Kelingking Beach with its own amazing scenery, called Paluang Cliff. It’s just a 5 minute drive from Kelingking and it gives you views of the Kelingking T-rex from the other side, without the crowds if you didn’t want to wait in line for a photo like I did 😀

I make it seem like these places were super quick and easy to see but it actually takes ages to get around the island. Many of the roads in Nusa Penida are still very rough and narrow so you go slower on some roads due to them being so rocky!
I personally wouldn’t hire a scooter or motorbike, although lots of people seem to do it with no issues, just because it gets so hot and dusty on the roads I’d rather be in an air-conditioned car haha.

Lunch was included as part of our tour package so we stopped off at a local Warung (restaurant) and chose something from a Set menu. I ordered some rice dish and Nathan got Chicken skewers with satay sauce. The portions were small but it was enough to keep us going for the day.

Next stop, Diamond Beach.
The cliff lookout over Diamond Beach has always been popular at Nusa Penida. However, a few years back, local developers carved a stairway straight into the cliff-face, opening up the beach to everyone.
It takes about 15 minutes to reach the bottom and it is pretty steep so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t have a good level of fitness. When you get to the end of the staircase, you actually have to hold onto a rope to get you onto the beach as the stairs don’t take you all the way to the ground. Again – don’t be bringing your 87 year old grandma down here.

While we were waiting for our turn to get down to the beach, we spoke to some people who were climbing back up and they told us to be careful while swimming in the ocean as someone had nearly been swept out there. Apparently it is not really recommended to go into the water at Diamond Beach. If you do, you shouldn’t go out too far as the riptides are very strong and there are some very rocky sections in the water too. Not to mention no one can really help you if you do get swept out as there are no lifeguard’s or anything around. If you are planning on going, just stick to the rock pools or the shallow waters for your instagram snap!

Kind of like I did…

Unfortunately we didn’t get the sun at Diamond Beach as it was shaded by the cliff. Nathan kept saying we should have walked down to Kelingking Beach and enjoyed the sun there but we weren’t to know that Diamond beach would be so shady! If we could do it again, we probably would have made the effort to treck the 120m’s down to Kelingking Beach and stayed there for the day as it really was stunning!

After spending a couple of hours at Diamond Beach, we woke up our driver who was having a little nap in the sand and we headed back up to the car.

By this stage, it was around around 3:30-4:00pm so we made the hour’s drive back to the harbour to get our boat back to Sanur.

There was definitely more places to see on Nusa Penida but as we were limited on time we mainly checked out the main spots that you see on everyone’s Instagram posts.
The boat ride back to Sanur felt a little faster than the way over. The poor guy who was sitting in front of us threw up the whole way back. Thank god Nathan and I don’t really get that seasick!

When we got off the boat, our driver was meant to meet us but my phone died and I was the only one who had his WhatsApp number. There were far too many people to be able to find him (plus I’d kinda forgotten what he looked like) so after walking around for ages we walked back to the place he parked his car when he dropped us off and thankfully he was there waiting for us! He couldn’t get in contact with us either so he walked back too – lucky!

After Agung dropped us off at our accommodation, Nathan and I freshened up a bit and then headed off to Jimbaran Beach to grab some dinner. There were so many restaurants at Jimbaran Beach we were gutted we didn’t find all these places the night before when we were trying to find somewhere to eat!

We ordered Nachos, Pizza and a couple of drinks from this restaurant called Beekini Bowl and sat on the beach to watch the planes lands as you could see the airport in the distance.
Was a nice relaxing way way to end a busy day!

Top Tips for visiting Nusa Penida

  • Bring water in an insulated drink bottle. It gets so hot and you’ll be walking lots so you’ll want your water to be cold when you’re sweating
  • There’s a lot of stairs and walking in the sun, lather on the sunscreen!
  • If you’re doing a day trip, book a driver for the day. Unless you’re a Bali pro, it’s more comfortable to hire a driver and get them to take you around the island. They’ll take you to where you want to go and everything is on your own time so there’s heaps of flexibility!
  • Don’t be on Diamond Beach or Kelingking Beach when the sun goes down as it will be dark when you hike back up
  • If you’re driving yourself around the island, take it slow as the roads have little maintanice and get very narrow
  • All the famous spots will be filled with tourists taking a picture. Get there early to avoid the lines. Luckily, most people just want a photo and will move on so the wait isn’t crazy long.
  • 3 Days is the recommended amount of time to see the WHOLE island however you can tick off the main sites in a day if you’re tight on time
  • There’s a hidden beach called Suwehan Beach which isn’t included in many of the day tours. It’s a 30 minute hike down to the beach but you’ll be greeted with gorgeous white sand and turquoise water. Go before lunchtime so you get the sun.